Philippine Butterfly

Archive for February, 2010

This restaurant is where I will try to consider the things that have happened in the past 24 hours.  On the way here, I saw a boy who wanted to ask me for something, something very important.  He was hungry, that much I gathered, but the rest of it was lost in languages.  His small hat reminded me of one that I had bought for my son before his mother and I decided that we could no longer go on.  It is a source of grief that comes back only at the end of some of the longer days, and the rest of the time, it is only a given circumstance.  This restaurant, Italian and smartly designed, will reimburse my own sense of purpose in the world.

Before the boy, I was walking and thinking about traveling.  I don’t normally get lost in thought, but sometimes in Singapore, I remember that I am not from here.  This makes me want to draw the line back to where I was before.  In the streets in Italy, there were too many people who were hungry, not enough to remember that there was a war, and just enough to fill the empty spaces with a bottomless want.  These are the stories I will tell my son, when I see him again.  For now, it is this city-state, this restaurant, and the evening ahead of me.  I put my fork in front of me by the napkin, and wonder about how things sometimes fall into place, and how they sometimes need help.  It is probably for the best that one cannot smoke in here.

It was my obsession at one time to be considering the way the birds play in the park.  They sing to each other, they preen themselves and inspect each other, and they fight over food.  Here, I am thinking about the wife I once had, and the son that I miss, and when I have wine and salad before me, it is almost too much.  My dinner guest will be here soon.  In the meantime, there is enough, and in time, we all eat from the same bowl.

This is definitely the place to be for a truly global alternative culture.   The difficulties of being alternative in Singapore already add some complex layers to the performance of self here, and it’s even more interesting when you add the greater complications of fame to the mix.  It’s a very impressive place to come, however, and easy to get swept up in how much there is to do on any given day in this very cosmopolitan city-state.  There are always plenty of sights to enjoy, and while away the afternoon, excellent Restaurants that specialize in Chinese food, that will remind you of why people speak so highly about the importance of the place as a major world port, and then the evening’s entertainment is entirely up to you.

You can see lots of pop music, whether it’s a big concert with a superstar from here or other parts of Asia, or Europe, or Africa.  It all exists somewhere here, because the performers and their agents understand that Singapore is a place to go for exposure.  There are also plenty of other kinds of music, and it’s likely that Goth Punk might not be what you’d expect to hear, but you surely can.  La ‘Dies is the band that’s fairly surely cornered the market on this music in Singapore, and the result is a very dark force that’s extraordinarily compelling.

They’ve been playing here as well as making headway into overseas markets, particularly the usual suspects for Singapore bands, such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Malaysia.  They have a difficult sound, and as Chinese artists performing in a genre that’s not overwhelmingly Chinese, there are more difficulties for market categorization, but this also opens up more doors for fascinating complexity.  The sound is very honed, and simultaneously disturbing and romantic, making every goths dream realizable.  Worth checking out for sure.

It’s hard not to love Singapore.  Even the most world-weary travelers perk up when they realize that they’ve just set foot in one of the most unique and lively places in the world.  The island city-state is a conglomeration of cultures, ideas, and attitudes, and they come together in interesting ways.  It also has a fascinating and rather complex history, that speaks of a major trading port that has seen a lot of the events and peoples of the world.  Today, it’s still a very active port town, and you can get most anything here.

This is very true for seafood, of course, and lots of other fresh ingredients, and that makes it a great place for a good Japanese restaurant.  There are lots of opportunities to try fantastic food, and the Japanese influence on local food here is very strong, and it’s a wonderful way to get into the rhythm of the city.  If you’re coming in the spring, you may want to time your trip with the Richard Poon concert.

This singer from the Phillipines is a Chinese crooner who has wowed audiences all over the world.  His father is a restaurant owner, and his mother is a big singer in Taiwan.  He’s been impressing people with his ability to make very sweet sounds in the tradition of the classic singers like Sinatra and Martin

My mission this week is to eat as many different kinds of curry as possible, and to not think about her.  So far, it’s working out very nicely, and she has not once crossed my mind.  I’ve been in Singapore for only a few hours, but have found an Indian restaurant that has already made me feel a little swoony.  It’s one of the benefits of having taste buds that are extremely sensitive, because smell is something that affects how we look at the world.

Nostalgia begins with the nose, literally, and that’s where I like to go whenever I’m here, because Singapore has memories that have nothing to do with her at all.  And we never got the chance to eat at an Indian restaurant, which is no loss, and even better because now I’m here and I can do this and not even think of her.  Onions remind me of being here before, long before I met her, when I discovered that Indian food is not mostly about heat or spice, but about subtleties.  Someone mentioned to me once that the Indian food in town is sometimes considered to be even better than what you can find in India.

I believe that.  I also believe that it’s possible to drown your senses in new sensations, and that can affect how memory behaves, and how it creates past events.  Maybe we are all made up of pieces of what happened before, but it’s true that in the moment we can rewrite how we think about the past.  She used to like to do that with me, where we’d be talking about childhoods with a conscious effort to retell it in a way that we liked.  It was one of the best ways to spend an afternoon and I just broke my promise to myself, and suddenly she’s everywhere.  It will be all right.

While you are staying in one of the fabulous hotels in the middle of Augusta you are sure to enjoy the nice amenities offered. They have some refreshing pools and spas. There is always room service for the hermit that just needs to not be disturbed. But there is a beautiful world out side to enjoy a bit of fresh air. There are plenty of little parks to walk in. There is Augusta Common which is a area of green that connects Broad Street with Reynolds Street. It is a peaceful place with a statue of James Oglethorpe. He was the founder of the state of Georgia. He came as a British general and philanthropist in hopes of creating homes for Britain’s poor.

There is also the Augusta Canal which holds it’s own in the history of the city. It is a park walk along the old canal that still provides power to the near by textile mills. It is the only canal in the country that is still doing what it was originally built to do. It was designed by J. Edgar Thomson  and was built under the supervision of Henry Cumming. It is now purposeful and a nice walk.

Albany is really a beautiful place and has tons of parks. I visited Albany in May, my friend Rita and I went to Albany to spend our time during the Memorial day holiday. Before we left, we made reservations for our hotel on-line, click here, I’ve always reserved hotel room online, because I can check out all the different hotel rates, accommodations and amenities. Since Albany is the capital of New York, we managed to find a hotel that we could afford and on that was centrally located.

Our first day in Albany, we visited Washington Park and really enjoyed ourselves very much, it’s a very beautiful and cool place. Our hotel also provided us with a number of things to do. We checked out a restaurant they recommended and apparently it was a famous restaurant and bar. They had great food and great drinks; we sampled many different drinks. The next day, after sleeping off our hang-overs, we went to the Tulip Festival. There was mostly food there, which seemed to be one of the main attraction besides music, we thought it be all about Tulips. We stayed for the whole day, listening to great performances. The area had long trails for hiking, jogging, biking or walking.

We made it back to our hotel loaded with items we bought at the festival. We didn’t know how we get all of the stuff we bought into our luggage. The hotel had a great suggestion for us, they told us to mail the stuff back to our home. They helped us with getting the items bundled up enough to mail and they told us we could leave our package with them and they will hand it to the postal worker. They even provided the printed out stamp, which them charged to our room. What a wonderful staff! I’m going to have to remember this hotel site where I booked our room, I’ve never run into better service.

When I was a kid, it seemed as if there was only one place to go to find a casino, and that was Las Vegas.  But, over time, the world tends to change (and speed up a great deal, too!), and before you know it, there’s even a casino in the small town of fifteen hundred, in which I grew up.  You can find today casinos in just about every major city and state, from Nevada to New York.  If you’ve got the itch to gamble, and if others in your party want to see some great theater, New York City may be your best bet.

Obviously, New York offers a great many ways to place that bet — there’s casinos and race tracks, even casino cruise ships.  Native American Casinos make up the bulk of ways to play, allowing you to gamble from table games to video poker.  In most cases, though, make sure that everyone in your party is at least eighteen, but if you want to play in the largest of the casino hotels that New York state offers, you’ll have to make sure everyone is twenty-one (the largest hotel is the Seneca Niagara hotel and casino, a place that has slot machines numbering over three thousand, and about a hundred tables; the age limit applies to any Seneca casino).

The City itself, though, has a number of great casinos, some in hotels, some simply near hotels, that should meet your needs.  Sometimes, I travel with a friend who dislikes gambling, and so I’ll send her off to the nearest entertainment.  For New York City, that can be practically anywhere, but after a day of seeing the sights, from the Statue of Liberty to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she starts out at the Times Square Ticket Booths, where she can get half-off tickets for a show that same day or night.  Meanwhile, I’ll be checking out the Blackjack tables.  It’s a perfect arrangement.

A “villa” is something you may expect to find in the Southwestern section of the United States, or even more so, just South of the border of those states.  But there is a fabulous and elegant villa located in Manhattan.  One may assume by the luxury and the architecture that it is a best New York City hotel, but it isn’t.  It was built in 1857 for the Litchfield Family residence.  Edwin Litchfield was a man of high standing, involved in real estate development and the railroad.  He bought an area of land in Brooklyn, that was comprised of a meadow, and swampland in 1852.  This is where he envisioned his estate. 

The house was constructed atop a hill close to the Gawanus Canal, and was designed and built by Alexander Jackson Davis.  At the time Davis himself was a prominent man, one of the most respected architects of the time.  And as some men title their yachts for their wives, Litchfield named their villa, Grace Hill, for his wife.  The life in the villa came to an end however, when the Parks Commission of Brooklyn declared that they wanted the property for the building of what is now Prospect Park.  The villa, is of the Italianate style, a beautiful building with vaulted ceilings, ornately decorated moldings and window frames, plaster, and originally had a stucco exterior.  Not too common at the time.  Over the years the stucco was removed and the facade is now common red brick. 

The building when through a complete restoration during 1987, and is the office building for the Prospect Park Alliance as well as the headquarters for the New York Department of Parks.  The view from the top of the hill is stunning, allowing one to see not only the surrounding neighborhood of Brooklyn, but as far as the New York Harbor.  There is also housed in the villa, the Verizon Learning Lab, and the Con Edison Discover Nature Theatre.  These are open to the public, and offer a look into not only the building and the family who built it, but the wildlife and the natural surroundings of the park as well.